Mindjack's execution is just ludicrously poor at times.

Mindjack's execution is just ludicrously poor at times.

Playing the same boring minigames over and over again in each stage (sometimes five or six times, without deviation), coupled with simple driving tasks and a lack of significant variation between missions make this a joyless grind with little reward.

This sort of do-nothing port is only going to alienate players and further reinforce the stereotype that the genre simply doesn't work on console systems.

The only real laugh in this game comes in the opening introduction (which you can watch in its almost-entirety here). The rest of the game is a plodding, boring mess that that forces you to play through the worst shooter genre clichés, and then asks you to laugh simply because the game's creators self-referentially point out how annoying those tropes are.

But decent tech is all for naught when paired with a bland and embarrassingly brief experience like Tony Hawk's Motion, which contains just four settings (two each for skate and snow), each with five total objectives.

Perhaps worst of all, the sense of place is gone.

Save the money, go outside, and just fight with the air. You'll get the same experience and look just as intelligent.

Absolutely nothing about Rise of the Argonauts stands out as special, and just when you think the game's about to take a turn for the better (at least in terms of reworking the Jason and the Argonauts story), its fundamental and technical problems -- including some annoying loading times in the Xbox 360 version -- bring it way back down.

It fails at presenting a compelling racing game, and more to the point, it fails at presenting a compelling Ridge Racer game, with backward graphics and bollixed controls.

The battle system reeks of incomplete, unfinished ideas.

The only real change-up in the whole game is when the Turtles get shiny cybernetic-looking gear when they travel into the future. It's literally wave after wave of enemies through eight stages that serve as mere backdrops. And that wasn't really what was worth remembering from the old days.

I understand that the game is meant for a younger audience, but there are quite literally hundreds of other titles out there that provide a far more enjoyable experience.

I understand that the game is meant for a younger audience, but there are quite literally hundreds of other titles out there that provide a far more enjoyable experience.

While some hardcore dungeon-crawler fans might get some enjoyment out of Valhalla Knights 2, I'd rather skip the grinding and play a game where the combat accentuates my exploration of a rich, engaging world.

The Transformers formula was meant for videogames. Giant robots destroying cities as the forces of good and evil struggle for supremacy. It's too bad the PSP developers weren't able to parlay that into a semidecent game.

Like the "real" Matt Hazard, Eat Lead is best left to fade into obscurity.

The survivor mode is like the game itself in a microcosm. It's rote and uninspired, a desultory thoughtless collage of bits and pieces surgically removed from the movies and dropped lifelessly into a dated engine.

And the state of the A.I. is deplorable.

If you play the game on 360, there's a Kinect mode that consists of a series of gameplay challenges (hold out against the Death Eaters chief among them), but the implementation is awful.

With the exclusion of co-op -- what people really want to play -- and the constant hint that a sequel's already on the way, Beast Rider feels like a difficult, drawn-out, $60 tutorial. Why bother?

So much in this game speaks to either a lack of time or pure laziness on the part of the developers.

Absolutely nothing about Rise of the Argonauts stands out as special, and just when you think the game's about to take a turn for the better (at least in terms of reworking the Jason and the Argonauts story), its fundamental and technical problems -- including some annoying loading times in the Xbox 360 version -- bring it way back down.

A slapdash title like this shouldn't take anyone's time or money.

You can play a few pointless sandbox maps that demonstrate the straightjacketed city progression, whether you're in Capua, Venice, Sparta, or Memphis.

Reviving Dreamcast games for the HD generation should involve a little more effort than putting out a slapdash port of the original.

Nothing says a simulator can't be fun. I love the idea of plotting out my draft board, targeting free agents, cutting dead weight, and juggling the salary cap. But Head Coach 09 just left me frustrated and angry.

I don't know what it would take to make a game of Spore's scope on the DS, but I know it requires an entirely different approach than the lamentably simplistic Spore Hero Arena.